TURN ON SOUND - I put some effort into makeing it fit to the vid!
After the first FPV flights (at medium winds) I had this wonderful, calm morning. The old chimney is a striking point in this scenery so it's inviting me for some FPV investigation. The higher field makes this very convenient.

Sonntag, 23. Januar 2011

If you start asking about range you get pushed to 2,4GHz very quickly! FPV Video however uses this band already - at least in my case - so these two things don't work well together (Video and Radio on the same band get's you interference and probably lower range also).
So when I bought a new radio last year - I chose the Futaba TC10 (or FF10 here in Europe) with the 35MHz option installed (switchable to 2,4GHz later). With 35MHz I trust them Futaba PCM receivers most (RDP149). You get 150m in the Range test - this can be multiplied by 10 to around 1,5km - which is also what the vendor says. If you extend the antenna cable to 2,06m you'll barely notice any difference. Maybe more stable signal far out, but not much more range. If you then go to 4,13m this is where the range gets really good! TIPP: I used one of the eight small cables inside an standard network cable! Today I got 800m and more range (with leaving the TX Antenna fully retracted!).

Test setup:

Radio mounted on a tree branch about 2m over ground, vertically facing the path I'll later go

set up failsafe to see fully deploeyd ailerons if the signal is lost - this way you can make the test alone! But you'll not be able to check range with running motor this way...

GPS starting waypoint stored - as reference

gone away with the model and waited for the first sign of a lost signal:
at 160m I got the first failsafe with the 2,06m antenna

Now I did the extension to 4,13m and then walked away further. I thought it would give me another 100m or so. But as I reached the natural ending of my test site (a hill) I stopped the test at awesome 800m (now multiply that with 10!).

as I said: only weakness on this test - no running motor - this might reduce the range...

With this numbers I dared to go out further than ever with my maxi. Now maybe seeing how far my video signal range is :-)
The first longrange flight was from ground to the mountain station of a cablecar on a nearby mountain (around 2000m high - 1000m alt difference from starting height, 3,2km line of sight to the target)
This vid will follow soon...

This were my first few FPV flights with my MaxiSwift. It's a simple and great setup. Only a bit big in the trunk...
I reused my "old" Blackstork OSD here - not as good as the ezOSD I have on another plane, but way better than not knowing how far out I am, and how many juice is left in the "tank". On this flights I had a max range of 1200m (didn't try more) with 2m Antenna on 35Mhz.

The above vid shows my christmas present - the Blade msr. A small micro heli (single bladed - with tailrotor). Very agile and fun to fly - and it seems to be invulnerable. I had so many crashes and nearly no damage so far...

AND - my blogcounter shows 20.000! Thanks for visiting regularly. I'll try to post interesting vids at least weekly this year too - so check back often. Pleas leave feedback and comment directly by the vid.